Computing and networking technologies have transformed many important aspects of everyday life. Computers have become a household staple instead of a luxury, and provide users with a tool to manage and forecast finances, control household operations like heating, cooling, lighting and security, and store records and images in a permanent and reliable medium. Networking technologies like the Internet provide users with virtually unlimited access to remote systems, information and associated applications.
Networked devices both wired and wireless are becoming increasingly prevalent. Conventionally, a number of different networking technologies have been employed for managing and controlling networked devices. For example, network printers are commonly implemented utilizing network-printing protocols over Ethernet. Another example is the X10 network protocol, which is utilized to remotely control devices (e.g., light switches, video cameras . . . ) using a power line network. While these technologies allow devices to be accessed and controlled remotely, many consumers have not availed themselves of the benefit of network devices.
In addition, as such networking technologies become robust, secure and reliable, more industries are shifting paradigms and employing such networks to perform sensing and control operation. For example, network of sensors can be employed to effectuate completion of most industrial controllers and processes. Such industrial controllers can function as special-purpose computers utilized for controlling industrial processes, manufacturing equipment, and other factory automation processes, such as data collection through networked systems. These operations involve front-end processing of materials such as steel production to more intricate manufacturing processes such as automobile production that involve assembly of previously processed materials. Oftentimes, such as in the case of automobiles, complex assemblies can be manufactured with high technology robotics assisting the industrial control process. Such assemblies require close monitoring of operations and data collection.
To achieve fine-grain monitoring, sensors are deployed in a dense setting on the scale of hundreds, so the sensor network can generate a significant amount of data. For data to be useful, these kinds of applications require reliable data collection. In general, a node in a sensor network is a special purpose computer, which can have at least one sensing component, at least a microcontroller (CPU), at least a network interface, such as a wireless radio transceiver. In most wireless network standards, the node can choose to use one of multiple wireless channels.